Maffra's reborn Eagles prepare for flight

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The Maffra Eagles go through their paces at training this week.Photo: Simon Odwyer

Near extinction four years ago, Maffra's football team
is now
flying the flag, reports Larry Schwartz.

The fierce Maori ceremonial haka holds no fear for a Victorian
country football club that a few years ago faced
near-extinction.

"We'll just stare them down," says a former player in a
35-member Maffra Eagles squad travelling to Auckland later this
year to represent Australian rules in New Zealand.

He's joking. But the comment epitomises the attitude of a club
that has now won three successive premierships and was last year
named Victorian Country Football League club of the year.

The trip is part of an extraordinary turnaround in football
fortune for the Eagles, who only four years ago seemed certain to
be dropped to a minor league. The "good old red and blacks" had
last won a flag in 1948, and the club, more than 100 years old, was
one of two set to be shifted in a VCFL restructure.

"They were looking at recruiting extra teams . . . closer to
Melbourne and they were not prepared to travel as far as Maffra or
Sale," said Eagles' secretary Allan Evans. (He said the move would
have been "farcical" for the club, which sometimes travels up to
150 kilometres to matches.)

Instead, as the result of a remarkable and rather unexpected
improvement in form, they have been chosen to play the exhibition
match against New Zealand on July 31 as it prepares to compete
against 11 other countries in an Australian rules tournament
here.

"From out of the blue, yet totally deserved," The Maffra
News said of the Auckland match.

"As part of their preparation for this year's cup, they wanted
to play some opposition that was not way above their league but was
still quite competitive," said Mr Evans.

The league suggested the small dairy town 220 kilometres
south-east of Melbourne. "Well, they're very keen," Mr Evans said
of the New Zealanders. "They've been over to Maffra twice and
watched us play . . . Look, we have no idea what the quality of the
opposition will be. That's part of the intrigue."

"It's huge," vice-captain Scott Henning, a 22-year-old builder,
said of the community's response to success. "The whole town gets
buzzed up about it."

Despite a population of only 4000, Maffra has produced players
of the calibre of the Kangaroos' Ben Robbins and former players
including Bill Bennett (Carlton) and Jeff Gieschen, who coached
Richmond and is now AFL umpires director.

Mr Evans attributed the recent success of the town's seniors,
reserves and under-18s teams to a decision to stop bringing in
players from Melbourne.

"We were always the smallest town in the league playing against
the giants with much bigger populations," he said, "so we used to
import players from Melbourne. It was a very costly exercise. It
was never successful.

"We've changed our philosophy completely. Every player in our
last premiership sides has either lived locally, played locally or
comes from a local minor league."

New Zealand plays Britain in Melbourne on August 3 in the first
round of the inaugural Australian Football International Cup. The
venue has not been announced.

The grand final will be a curtain raiser to the
Collingwood-Carlton match at the MCG on August 13.